Forty Years On
by Antikythera
Summary: What if V.V. had been assassinated before he received his Code? What sort of Britannia would Charles have ruled without him? Our story starts with Lelouch vi Britannia, heir apparent, aged 10 or so...
1. Chapter 1

I blinked the fuzz from my eyes. Gottwald had awakened me sometime between two and three in the morning by candlelight. It was an ancient ritual that dated back at least to the _New England Primer_ days, but no less annoying for it. I looked down and noticed an unpolished patch on my left shoe. Maria must have missed it in the dim lighting.

An equally annoying coach ride had followed. I rubbed my eyes and blinked. My father raised an eyebrow.

"Tired?" he said.

"Yes, if you _must_ know."

"Then sleep."

The coach punctuated his recommendation with a jolt. Beams of sunlight streamed into my face through a gap in the curtains that Just. Wouldn't. Close. For the tenth time that morning, I found myself thinking back to silk sheets and a four-post bed with extremely thick drapes.

"The State carriages could have done with better suspension, Father."

The Emperor smiled ever so slightly.

"Think of it as preparation," he said.

I scowled and stuffed my head into a pillow. For the next several hours, I remained just conscious enough to notice how much the coach's vibrations ticked me off. My teeth rattled. The pillow didn't block the light, either.

I'd visited the countryside before in my capacity as Count of Essex. I had not, however, visited Dunwich. Gaslights flickered in the streets where electric lamps should have been.

Evening already.

The Dunwich Latin School – which, incidentally, did not teach Latin – was still a few miles away when we stopped at some local inn or other. Boys in top hats milled around the bar, eating hot potatoes and chaffing their fellows between bites. The barmaid smiled at my father. I scowled at the familiarity, but looked more closely just the same. She was old, I realized. I found myself wondering whether she _had _met him when –

He shooed me upstairs.

The room was nice enough, in a primitive sort of way. Jeremiah started the fireplace. The warmth reminded me just how frozen my feet had become. My father followed a few minutes later, newspaper in hand. He sat down. A wave of his hand signaled Jeremiah to wait outside, so he did.

We sat in silence while the fireplace crackled. My father kicked off his boots, and I mine. The chambermaid arrived a few moments later with our order: stout for my father, a bundle of coffee wrapped in crisp paper for me (and my growing migraine), and a plate of steak and oyster sauce for both of us. After presenting us with our meal, the servants also withdrew. Steam wafted between us.

"Well…" my father said.

"Well," I replied.

"You'll like it, I think."

I raised an eyebrow.

"Not immediately, mind," he added. "But you'll see the advantages eventually."

"What," I said, "you mean the satisfaction in fifty years of sending _my _heir off to the School-Where-Childhood-Goes-To-Die?"

The edges of my father's mouth twitched upward a smidgeon. He crossed his feet near the fire. His voice, as always, was slow and deliberate.

"My _dear_ son," he said. "Children grow up so fast these days. One moment they're barely out of diapers, and the next they're plotting palace revolutions against you. Surely you wouldn't begrudge me a little sadisti—ahem—fatherly enjoyment out of watching these character-forming moments in your life?"

I chanced a smirk.

"It's all academic, Pater dear," I said. "Nunnally'll probably assassinate both of us."

He crinkled the newspaper and looked down at me.

"You still haven't forgiven her for putting a dress on your Napoleon doll, have you?" he said.

"Putting a dress on my Napoleon _action figure_!" I snapped. "And it was sacrilege, Father! Blasphemy of the—"

He sighed. I shut up.

"Lelouch."

"Father?"

"We don't speak about important things very often," he said. "But I intend to tell you something."

I admit that this surprised me. We'd often spoken about things that I'd counted as _very_ important – wars, politics, the economy, and such. Not that he listened to my advice, but the point remained…

"I'm listening, Father."

"You are a very clever young man," he began.

I felt a sort of antsy sensation in my shoulders, and the urge to look down.

_Well of __course__ I'm-_

"You're probably thinking right now that I've said something rather condescending," he said. "And, unfortunately, my statement comes with a corollary. You are also a very inexperienced young man."

Ah…yes.

Right.

'Experience': That catch-all category that magically invalidates every argument from people younger than twenty.

Something of this must have shown in my face, since my father frowned a bit. Not much, though. He folded his paper in his lap and crooked his finger for me to come closer. I pulled my chair forward. Its squeal on the floorboards seemed like the breaking of a spell.

The bubble returned a few moments later, when my father prodded the logs with a poker. The fire crackled and snapped, and the flames danced.

"How much do you know about your uncle Vivian?" he said. "Or your grandmother on my side of the family?"

"Only what you told me," I replied. "Mother won't speak about them."

His voice hardened slightly.

"You asked her?"

"Y-yes."

"Then I applaud her discretion," he said. "Lelouch, I won't go into details, because they are not necessary to make my point. I _will_ say that my mother—your grandmother—and my brother…"

He waited.

"My uncle," I acknowledged.

He nodded.

"Your grandmother and your uncle died in a very unpleasant succession crisis. Your joke about Nunnally a moment ago was a young man's joke. I do not begrudge it to you, but it had more truth than you might realize."

Again, he must have seen my expression, since his voice warmed a bit. He patted my shoulder.

"Oh, not in the way you're thinking," he said. "I don't mean that Nunnally would actually threaten your life someday. But she may need to take others' lives. And you, the heir to the Britannian throne, _will_ need to take them. There is no question of that. You grew up too late to realize just how fragile Britannia is."

I couldn't entirely keep the skepticism out of my voice.

"And you want to make sure I don't change your empire too much."

"I want to make sure that you can rule _your_ empire as _you_ see fit when the time comes," he replied, tapping my shoulder with his finger at each enunciation. "…And that, my son and heir, is a very different thing."

He had these hypnotic eyes, my father. Deep, deep purple. You could lose yourself in them when the firelight flickered just right. I looked away.

He ruffled my hair.

"I attended Dunwich as a boy," he said. "My uncle rode with me in the same carriage we just did."

"Oh?" I said.

"When you finish your first term, we'll exchange stories."

"I…would like that."

"I thought so."

Father took the next few minutes to finish his drink, and then rose from his chair. It was not customary to hug each other at this point. We shook hands, and I dipped my head in a slight bow.

"You have your luggage?"

"Yes, Father."

"You had best be off, then."

Jeremiah escorted me to the carriage for the remainder of the ride. The chambermaid fussed over me a bit before I closed the door, brushing off a coffee ground from my jacket and calling me a "little dear" or something equally stupid. My father remained at the inn. So did Jeremiah.

* * *

><p>The coach ride that followed left something to be desired.<p>

My breath froze into clouds every time I exhaled. Between them, the window and my velvet collar had given up the fight to the November air. I hadn't brought a blanket along, and my feet hung exposed from the edge of the seat. Not that I could feel my legs or anything. At least I'd sneaked some hot coffee into a thermos.

I listened to the horses' hooves ring on the cobbles for a while. Their harnesses jingled. I stole a glance out the window and watched steam rising from their heads. The wind soon persuaded me that this was a bad idea, and I closed the window soon afterward.

The coffee ran out before the cold did. Eventually, though, we got there.

The coachman's horn sounded for the final time.

I arrived at Dunwich Latin School at around seven in the evening, heavily caffeinated. The gates squealed when the guard opened them. I squinted and looked around. The fields, forests, and streams promised good hunting. Broken trees, visible even by moonlight, promised something else: knightmare skirmishes.

So this was Dunwich, then, the School of Schools. This was the place where the students ran businesses from their dormitories, where the average second-year could give you a summary of the Statute of Uses directly from Coke, and where at least five children each year broke their legs climbing trees. Two more, on average, drowned in the rivers annually.

More than half of the Knights of the Round had attended this place. Most of the Emperors had as well.

"Jump down, Highness."

Uh, yeah…about that…

I did my best. My legs had other plans, but the coachman steadied me before I toppled over. On the bright side, the jolt from my feet landing on the cobbles woke me up a bit.

Everything was gray. At first, I'd attributed it to the lighting, but I soon corrected myself. A gray chapel, gray schoolhouse, gray headmaster's building, and gray tower loomed over me in turn. The _clip-clop_ of my feet echoed through the compound. A Britannian flag flopped and sagged from the tower's pinnacle. Its blue and faded red would have blended into the rest if it wasn't for the green of the serpent's skin that had somehow escaped weathering.

A boy ran to greet me. He looked about my own age, with blue eyes and fluffy blond hair. I noted a slight tan that suggested a lot more outdoor exercise than I usually indulged in.

There was something else, too. The boy didn't stand; he lounged. As soon as he was within speaking distance, he nodded to the coachman as if he was dismissing him. After a moment, I realized that he was doing just that: the coachman bowed and withdrew.

"Lelouch, I presume?" the boy said.

"_Prince_ Lelouch, if you don't—"

"—mind? Not at all. Unfortunately, the Management does. 'Equality until earned' and all that."

I suppressed the urge to roll my eyes, and instead shook his hand.

"Lelouch it is, then," I said.

He graced me with a wide, imbecilic grin.

"Gino Weinberg," he said.

I could already tell that this was going to be a long day, and Gino spared no time or expense in lengthening it. My hat, it seemed, did not meet school standards. Unspoken horrors would surely befall me without a regulation hat. Fortunately for all involved, the Dunwich school compound contained a milliner's shop, which soon relieved Mr. Weinberg of his fashion anxieties and me of a sizable sum of money. I ended up with a shiny top hat, though I'd briefly considered purchasing a sequined white pillowy headdress just for spite.

I'll give Gino some credit, though: he knew how to make you feel welcome. I'm told on good authority that a Lelouch vi Britannia whose skin is tingling and eyelids are drooping after thirty-six hours awake is not an ideal companion. Nevertheless, Gino introduced me to the rest of the rabble as we passed through the courtyard. I did not attempt to strangle any of them. We reached the school-house hall a short time later.

The hall opened into a quadrangle perhaps thirty by eighteen feet. Enormous tables ran along each side of the room. Heat was provided by two fireplaces, one on each side, that several boys clustered around. They sat tailor-style, and their amusements were varied: cards, studying or debating stock purchases at the case might be.

One of the boys waved to Gino, but my guide brushed past them with a nod.

We entered a hallway with a shallow arch and precious little light save for a bare bulb. It looked rather like a bunker, but less comfortable. A row of doors lined the left side of the wall. Gino stopped at the fourth and ushered me in.

The term 'cell' sprang immediately to mind. It was about six feet by four feet, with barred windows. Thin plaster walls completed the ambience, and I could hear a video game blaring in the next room. ("Contraband", my host assured me. The staff would probably confiscate it as soon as they found out).

Aside from this, I noticed a hard couch, a backless wooden chair, and 19th century prints of John L. Sullivan (plus a couple racehorses) that hung on the walls. Their colors had faded quite some time ago. The paper had yellowed. A few books with titles like _Basic Tactics _and _Wilson's Property_ lay on a bookshelf. Beside them were a chipped cup and a box of candles. If anything, the chill in my room was worse than outside.

"They forgot the mousetrap," Gino said. "I'll give you one of my spares."

"Um…thanks."

"And then there's this," he said.

He reached into his jacket. I caught a glint of gold, and felt a flutter of adrenaline. At last, something I was familiar with.

"Your knightmare frame's key," said Gino.

I admit that my smile was genuine when I took it.

"Thanks."

A bell chimed. Gino motioned for me to follow him.

As we walked, he explained the niceties of heating. The prefect had apparently fixed a pair of curtain rods near his door, and he drew the curtains closed at night to siphon the heat into his room. This left us with two options: we could freeze or build our own fires. The latter option was smoky. The former was incredibly uncomfortable.

We arrived at the dining hall, and I got the first good look at my classmates.

For all that Britannia boasts of its uniformity, we were a pretty diverse lot. Noblemen's sons from Area 2 brought bottles of sauce and pickles with them. A blond patch of children at the table across from me munched on _bjúgu _sausages that their parents must have sent from Area 5. The Area 3'ers accompanied their meals with hotter fare. In some respects, though, the various groups were alike. They all whispered, stole bread from each other, and shot one another with pellets whenever they thought their prefects weren't looking.

A few of them talked to me. I gave them the Cliffnotes version of royal upbringing, and they gave me brief synopses of their family trees, education, and so on. Standard high society nonsense. One of them hinted darkly about rumors that Dunwich would see its first female pupils this year. Shock. Horror. Gino winked and said that he hoped so.

At the head of our table, an older man with swept-back hair and a scar across his face watched the proceedings from behind the covers of Mahan's _Influence of Seapower Upon History_. His name was Andreas Darlton; I'd met him before my father had appointed him Headmaster. He rose from his seat. Conversations ceased.

"Stand!" he barked.

We did, and said grace.

The meal took a little under an hour. We mostly kept mum, but occasional whispers got through the prefects' surveillance. Mine was not among them.

We filed out around 9:30 – an early night by my standards, but I was ready to fall into a coma by that point. Gino tapped me on the shoulder.

"Eh?"

"Um, Lelouch…d'you have an alarm clock?"

"Er—"

"Never mind," he said. "Get some sleep. I'll wake you up for it."

"For what?"

He grinned.

"You'll see."

Gino closed the door. I did not sleep much that night, partly because of the cold.

* * *

><p><strong>AN:** The use of Dunwich, Massachusetts neither confirms nor denies the presence of Ancient Horrors aside from C.C. Also, Britannian history and society in this story may occasionally diverge from the background provided in Code Geass.


	2. Chapter 2

Gino woke me in the middle of a vivid dream. One moment, I was negotiating with a horde of Germanic mongooses to save the Roman Empire, and the next I was shivering in crisp air and darkness. Gino turned his back so that I could dress, and then, without a word, lead me out through the quadrangle and past the fives' court. We reached the chapel. Passed it.

"It's chilly," Gino said. "Let's run."

And with that, he took off at a leisurely pace that still forced far too much freezing air into my lungs. While I imagined myself coughing up blood, Gino spared a little breath to point out the sights. Dunwich's students used a corner of the schoolyard for fights. They'd chosen it well; most of the masters lived on the other side, and didn't pass the place in the afternoons. Further on, a field bordered by trees hosted most fire-team and squad practice. Beyond that, we passed a small island complete with a moat.

"You want to slow down?" Gino said.

I growled something like "no" between wheezes. He patted my shoulder. On the bright side, the cold did seem to have dissipated a little. Steam rose from the tops of our heads. Looking back on it now, white cotton probably wasn't the best material for school exercise uniforms in the New England winter.

We passed through a final copse of trees. An enormous field greeted us. Perhaps it had once been green, but now cracked trees, muddy gouges, and knightmare-sized foxholes extended for thousands of yards. Gino flicked out his wrist and checked his watch.

"Just in time for scrimmage," he said. "Good thing, too; Naoto's ghastly particular about punctuality."

"Who?" I said.

"Naoto Stadtfeld," he said.

…Ah, yes. Naoto Stadtfeld. Idealistic, pigheaded, infinitely gullible Naoto Stadtfeld.

I didn't know him then, though I would come to soon enough: cock of the school and provocateur extraordinaire from his perch atop the _Dunwich Student Chronicle_. My favorite plaster saint. If you've read your history books, I suspect you're looking askance at the spectacle of a half-Japanese integrationist leading Britannia's best and brightest. I still get the question from biographers, at any rate – mostly the younger ones.

The simple answer, of course, is that the Britannia of those days was not the Britannia of the Great Pacific War. Not yet. My father had just concluded his first treaty with the Diet. On Wall Street, businessmen smoked thousand-pound notes and watched the share price for Nippon-Britannia Sakuradite skyrocket. In the _Kantei_, Prime Minister Kururugi mulled over the possibility of sticking his kid in a flannel suit and sending him westward. Every Britannian schoolboy knew that the Euros were the enemy then. Plastic _panzer-hummel_ figures in toy stores sold accordingly.

Most of all, Britannia in those days still had uses for its 'half-breeds'. As long as a half-Japanese Britannian touched his forelock to the right people, he could make a pretty good life for himself. Especially if he was a natural leader – and Naoto was.

How times change.

"He runs these scrimmages," Gino said. "Well, he commands our side, anyway. C'mon…I'll take you to the field and get you suited up."

As we ran, Gino regaled me with stories of boys who'd broken collar-bones, legs, and other assorted appendages in scrimmages past. I considered remarking on the wisdom of allowing unsupervised knightmare practices with a group of schoolboys, but ultimately decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth.

The knightmares seemed cruder, older, and more heavily padded than the Glasgows I'd seen during Father's military reviews. Very early training models. Military castoffs. They also looked as if they'd had several unpleasant encounters with steel wool – most of the paint had been scoured off, and the rest was chipped.

The group assembled under a cluster of elms. Aside from Gino, I recognized a few other faces from the lower years.

A red-haired young man hopped down from a knightmare frame. Like the rest of us, he wore white, but dust had already browned his pants around the ankles. He looked at us with his hands locked behind his back.

"Naoto," Gino whispered to me.

Our leader's shoes crunched the gravel as he paced.

"Right, you lot," Naoto said. "I'm not in the mood for a long speech today. Your instructors have drilled you till you could do most of your tasks blindfolded, which is good. Remember teamwork, though. If the Target Simulation System counts one of your friends as wounded, don't leave him behind. This isn't a shooter game, guys. You can only win as a team."

He cleared his throat. His breath condensed in a little cloud.

"That's all."

For the first time, I noticed a goal on our end of the field. It wasn't large when seeing it from a knightmare frame – two twenty-foot metal poles with a crossbar ten feet above the ground running between them. The crossbar had a flag hanging down from it, and was detachable; apparently, the other side would win if they could steal it and take it home. Capture-the-flag scaled to ogreish proportions.

"The other side has one, too," Gino said.

"Yeah, I figured."

I learned later that the structure's design had descended from the rugby field that had once stood there. Fortunately, rugby's endless drop-kicks, punts, places, and off-side rules hadn't survived the transition. You just pointed your weapon and killed the other side. Nice and simple.

A few minutes passed, and the crowd thickened. Larger boys sauntered out from their dorms with the impressions of their sleeping surfaces still on their faces. Stadtfeld sent for more knightmares and more weapons. At last, the hour struck. The boys assembled in a line, perhaps forty of them all told.

I felt a cold twinge in my stomach when I saw a few of the guys from sixth form: I'd swear that half of them were six feet tall if they were an inch, with stubbly faces. If they bullied younger students here like I'd heard they did, I was in for it.

"Quiet," someone called.

A man in a robe began the calling-over. Each of us answered "here" in our turn. The lower-form boys threw acorns at each other while they waited, until the air was full of them like hornets from a broken nest.

Prefects milled around as if they had nothing to do. They occasionally waved their canes at suspected acorn throwers, but the real culprits had usually ducked out of sight, and the innocent victims of the scoldings usually bobbed their heads immediately. I must have wondered aloud whether they could be a little more vigilant to prevent desertions, since Gino replied:

"Nobody would cut _this_ practice."

Then again, they _did_ sweep the outer group into the center when the calling-over concluded. Perhaps they didn't share Gino's faith.

"Move!"

Boys rushed to their knightmare frames. For a few minutes, the hydraulic whirr of knightmare cockpits filled the field, and then the boys divided into three masses. The first group headed for our goal, and the second for what I assumed (but still could not confirm visually) was the goal on the field's opposite end.

The largest mass clumped in the center. Each house had its own color. Their knightmares ranged from lime green to fuschia; the crowd looked a bit like a pile of sugar candies. I zoomed my targeting system toward the group. Stadtfeld and his enemy counterpart had dismounted. Something copper-colored flickered between them.

Cheers on our side. Both groups dispersed.

"Naoto's won the toss," Gino said.

"What's that mean?"

"We attack first."

Belatedly, I realized that my cockpit didn't have climate control. The heat from the run had already worn off. As usual, the white regulation pants might as well have been nylon leggings for all the warmth they retained.

A diagram appeared on my display. That's when I realized that it wasn't just two chaotic masses after all. Both sides were organized into rudimentary platoons – three regular squads, one weapons squad, and a "headquarters" each. No medics, though…

Gino took the last seconds before contact to introduce me to the other members of our fire team: Roderick Laglen, a freckled kid with brown curly hair; Jason Corkran, black-haired, broad-shouldered and slightly fatter than average; and Arnold McTurk, a pale, red-headed guy who was about my own height and weight – which is to say, slightly small and borderline emaciated.

They all gave me toothy grins in turn. If they minded the presence of a fifth member in their four-man team, they weren't showing it.

While I checked my remaining systems, Gino and his compatriots discussed their plans for the upcoming match.

I soon found that many of the tactics and techniques I'd learned for conventional knightmare handling were only used in simulator training. The hard-won lessons of knightmare combat from the past few years – not to mention infantry and armored combat from the previous hundred - went out the window in "scrimmages".

More fun that way, apparently.

Still, Dunwich had left its mark. When they communicated, my classmates did so in a common patois of acronyms and technical terms. Point fire was still point fire. Rushes took three to five seconds. When students looked at Dunwich's charming knolls rising from the morning mist, they all saw the same avenues of approach, obstacles, and cover as their adult counterparts. Combat was still chaos, and the boys needed a way to impose order on it. Even the ritual of triple-checking equipment had endured. A half-hour inspection would conclude the scrimmage, complete with a debriefing.

"PLAY!"

Stadtfeld shot forward like a rocket. His fire team closed five hundred yards in seconds. The tonfas came out. They smashed into the foremost group of enemies before they could bring any fire to bear; only the lucky ones spun out of the way.

Stadtfeld lead from the front, it seemed.

A silver-and-black knightmare swung at Stadtfeld's head. He blocked the blow with his tonfa trailing downward as if he was playing singlestick. As soon as he'd caught the blow, he flicked his wrist around in an arc. His knightmare's front foot pivoted with it. Stadtfeld's tonfa struck his opponent's head dead-center. The enemy's knightmare powered down as the System recorded a kill.

My radio hissed.

"Watch the flanks!"

There's an old Britannian proverb that the king must lead if he expects his pawns to follow. Here's the problem with taking that advice too literally: if you get too far forward, you can't see what's happening around you. Stadtfeld had sacrificed his control of the battle for surprise. I filed this information away for later use.

Six or seven enemy knightmares approached us from a low ridge on our right.

"Right," said Gino. "Let's go."

We all set up a _very _hasty firing position while I clicked my autocannon's laser rangefinder. Our targets hugged the ridge, just low enough that we couldn't get clear shots.

"Corkran?" Gino said. "Grenade."

A euphemism from the days when our General Staff had adapted infantry tactics to knightmares. What Gino _meant_ was "mortar shell". And he got one.

FPLUNK!

Our onboard computers tracked the simulated shell as it plummeted toward the enemy. They scattered. Their own knightmares' microphones must have been simulating the whistle of an incoming round.

"Heh," Gino said. "That's flushed 'em out…"

We all fired. Gino's target rifle did most of the damage.

BLAM!

_Kill confirmed_, a female voice droned over our intercom. The empty shell casing plinked off a rock.

BLAM!

_Kill confirmed._

They broke and ran. Gino whooped and drew his tonfas. A collective groan rose through the rest of the fire team. Apparently, Stadtfeld wasn't the only one who liked to lead from the front.

Corkran fired another shell – smoke this time; a _lot_ of it – and a white cloud descended on the base of the hill. We charged. Corkran loaded another shell as he tore after us – here was a guy who could rub his stomach and pat his head at the same time.

Rush and counter-rush followed. We soon found ourselves deeper into enemy territory than expected.

All very ragged-looking to an outsider, perhaps. Fair enough. So is a real battle.

Three or four of our enemies had fled to a redoubt of packed earth. Corkran went down. The rest of us scrambled behind our own cover and waited for Laglen. He soon arrived, diving into the dirt beside us and setting up the heavy autocannon. A few moments later, he opened up. Our microphones fed us the simulated _thwumps_ of large-caliber shells hitting the earthworks.

_BLAMBLAMBLAMBLAMBLAMBLAM…_

"Move," Gino said.

We did. Knightmare frames can move quickly in short bursts – so quickly that they find themselves in hand-to-hand combat far more frequently than their flesh-bound counterparts.

Gino slammed through one of the apertures, widening it into a knightmare-sized hole that wouldn't have looked out of place in a cartoon. One of our enemies pointed at us. His knightmare's shoulders had a chevron. Gino went for him.

That's when another knightmare plowed into me. My stomach took a centrifugal plunge as we rolled in a cloud of dust to the sound of scraping metal. My opponent reached for a tonfa. I grabbed his hand and released a chaos mine above us.

"DOWN!" I screamed.

My companions ducked. My knightmare's targeting display lit up as the chaos mine sprayed blanks like fireworks. The knightmare on top of me absorbed its fire. It went silent. Mine was unharmed. It only took a moment to roll it off.

Dust clung to Gino's knightmare like powdered sugar on a donut. It had entered the fight purple and red. Now, it was brown. I must have looked the same.

I heard on the radio that our opponents were retreating across the line.

We joined another fire team.

_Here's your time, Stadtfeld._ I thought. _While your men are fresh…_

The other team fired whenever we moved. We returned the favor.

Come to think of it, Stadtfeld kept a surprisingly tight leash on everybody when you consider that he was in combat himself. I noticed a change in Gino's voice over the radio when he spoke to Stadtfeld. He'd had abandoned the sarcastic warble he'd used over dinner. His replies dropped an octave; became leaden. A boy's idea of sternness.

I peered over the hill's crest. Our forces seemed deeper than usual after a simulated artillery shell had scattered them. At that distance, they were colored spots on dirt. Stadtfeld was inching toward the enemy's left, though. It was weaker there.

Stadtfeld struck. He and his companions lanced straight inward, racing past a cluster of willows that had somehow escaped demolition.

_PLUNNNNNNG!_

Even from the ridge, my targeting computer treated me to the simulated ricochet of a shell glancing off Stadtfeld's armor. But only glancing. His knightmare "staggered". One of his companions grabbed his shoulder. He was heaved upright again. The charge continued.

Gino's deep-voiced calm went out the window.

"Ha!" Gino said. "Hahaha! Forward the House, eh!? Foxhole ahead. See if you can't pot one."

Mind you, I'm not my little sister. As hard as our tutors had tried to fashion both of us into killing machines, I could never wear a knightmare frame like a second skin. Nor had I acquired Nunnally's knack for zapping targets at far, far beyond normal standoff range. And never in a thousand years could I have replicated the time she'd thrashed Guilford like an amateur in knightmare-to-knightmare sparring.

Still, I _could_ shoot things pretty well.

I checked my tactical computer for range and wind estimates. Ver-ry good.

I squeezed the trigger, and down he went. The rest of the enemy ducked. By that time, Gino's skates were already tearing up dust and turf as he zigzagged toward the position.

I also started noticing a rhythm in the boys' communications. Each knightmare acted as a sensor; a node in a communications network. Schoolboy slang disappeared over the radio. They rapped out information concisely and then left the line.

"Stadtfeld has the bar with the flag!"

I looked around. Only three of us left: Gino, McTurk, and me. No; that was premature. Something caught McTurk's knightmare in the breastplate with an unholy crash. His knightmare's eyes dimmed. The machine slumped.

Gino spared a few colorful words for the enemy sniper.

Entertaining though it was, the stream of profanity froze on his lips. His knightmare's gauntlets clenched around the tonfas.

I looked at the field. An enemy knightmare was skating on an intercept course toward Stadtfeld and his bodyguards. Its landspinners threw up so much dust that one would have thought the display was intentional.

Unlike its compatriots, this particular knightmare frame had a bronze-colored cape on its shoulders. The fabric's surface was unmarked. It must have been one of the tougher synthetic fibers. Expensive.

"Lelouch."

"Mmh?" I said.

"My marksman's down," Gino said. "I need fire support. Was that shot back there a fluke?"

"Try me."

He did. Not for the last time, I found myself pining for the special match-ammunition that Nunnally preferred. Or its computer-simulated equivalent.

Flashes of light winked from the enemy knightmare. It must have been firing, since Naoto Stadtfeld's first companion tumbled into the dirt. The fallen knightmare plowed a furrow fit for a trenchline. Naoto's own weapon flickered back. And missed.

_BLAM! _

My own shot went wide of the mark. Naoto's assailant – whoever he was – whipped his head toward my position. He pulled out an automatic cannon and fired it back at me one-handed. The motion was almost absentminded – he barely seemed to be looking when he fired. And he was moving.

I use the word "seemed" with care, though. The line of ricochets he'd drawn in the sand two feet in front of me sorta scotched that possibility.

"Drat," I muttered.

I ducked again. Gino was halfway there. Knightmares are amazingly quick beasts when they have a mind to be. He wouldn't make it, though.

Naoto's last guard went down. The attacker tossed his autocannon aside and drew his own tonfas, bearing down on Naoto. An opening. I squinted through my sights and tried again.

_BLAM!_

Everything hung in the air for a moment – Naoto's jump over a slope, the enemy's near-pirouette, and Gino pulling up from two hundred yards away, a tonfa poised between his gauntlets like a throwing knife. No more ammo, apparently.

And then, the enemy knightmare went limp in mid-flight. Its body spun. Arms whirled around its axis like helicopter blades. The tonfas flew in opposite directions. One buried itself up to the hilt in the ground. The other took out a line of trees near the battleground's edge.

Cue a roar from our team.

The rest was an afterthought. Gino escorted Naoto the remaining distance, placing his own machine between Naoto and any would-be snipers.

"AND…MATCH!"

I winced at Gino's shout when they crossed the requisite line.

While the others added their own ear-splitting thoughts, I zoomed my scope in on the enemy knightmare I'd dropped.

The hatch opened with a puff of dust. The first thing I saw was a shock of red hair. Its owner hopped down, nearly catching his orange-and-gold cloak on the hatch. He nearly fell over when he landed.

The enemy pilot swayed for a moment. His hand nearly shot out to steady itself on the knightmare, but he paused at the last minute. A black glove hovered near the dusty side without touching it.

Like rats crawling out of the sewers, Dunwich's students were already out of their knightmares. A few had brought picnic baskets. They tossed oranges, apples, and ginger-ale bottles to their classmates. Note the careful choice of words: ginger-ale _bottles_. I had my doubts about the contents. Gino chugged one of them in a couple seconds.

I pressed a button. The cockpit's roof opened, and I peeked out over the rim with a pair of binoculars.

The pilot I'd shot down looked like an older student. He straightened and shook his head. It must have worked, too, since he spun toward my position with alarming speed. Green eyes narrowed and glared across the battlefield.

Indulging my insolent streak has seldom done me any favors. Strangely enough, this knowledge never seemed to stop me.

I waved.

Even from across the field, the pilot must have seen the movement. He went very still for a moment. With deliberate slowness, he raised his hand, pointed at me, and drew the finger across his throat.

Crap.

I jumped back into the cockpit and sped for the hangars.

* * *

><p>Gino was waiting for me.<p>

He seemed a little woozy, which might have been related to the alcoh—er, ginger-ale I smelled on his breath. I got a slap on the back and promises to make me the squad's marksman during "real" practices.

I inquired about the pilot I'd beaten.

Alas, hearing that I'd shot "that psycho Bradley" did not fill me with confidence. Scary pilot, too. At almost eighteen, he was already on the short-list for the Knights of the Round.

Nor did listening to Gino's bloodthirsty account of the other seventh-years he'd shot in duels – oh yeah, he was a seventh-year, all six feet and thirteen stone of him – do much for my growing anxiety. I even learned a bit of trivia. Drowning in rivers was only Dunwich's second most common cause of death. Your faithful correspondent had apparently just pissed off the first.

Not that Gino noticed the slight shiver in my shoulders. Or if he did, he probably blamed the cold and adrenaline from the scrimmage. At least his chatter kept my mind off the obvious.

"Soooo…What's being a royal like, Lelouch? Know anybody else in Dunwich?"

I shrugged.

"Not much to tell," I said. "I'm afraid I didn't have friends before my sixth birthday. Still don't, I suppose. Aside from Winston and the cats, I mostly dealt with my relatives."

"Wait. You don't mean Winston MacMillan?"

"Er, no."

"Winston Oxton? Or—don't tell me he was Winston Drakesw—"

I twiddled my thumbs.

"None of those people."

"Ohhh…" he said. "Gotcha. _Parvenu _family, huh?"

"Well, he didn't have a _family_ exactly…" I said.

"So he was illegitimate?"

"What? No! I mean, he didn't…um…have parents."

Gino tilted his head to the side slightly.

"Oo-kay. What did he look like? Maybe I met the kid at one of mom's society dinners."

"He was sort of…invisible," I said.

Gino raised an eyebrow.

"You had an imaginary friend?"

"Not exactly."

"Right. A 'real' person," – Gino made little quotation marks with his fingers – "who didn't have a family, didn't have parents, was _invisible_..."

I felt my jaw tightening.

"Winston was _real_," I said.

Gino's smile only widened. I felt a major headache coming on.

"Awww...Did your widdle fwiend have a birthday, at least?" Gino said.

"OF COURSE he had a birthday, you intoxicated cretin!" I snapped. "I incorporated him myself!"

"How _cuuuute_, that's…Wait, what?"

I noticed belatedly that my teeth were grinding. I took a breath and affected an offhand shrug.

"You know how corporations are considered people under Britannian law?" I said.

He nodded.

"Er…Well, I was lonely for a while when Nunnally injured herself climbing a tree, so I figured, hey, why not make myself a friend? I filed articles of incorporation with the secretary of state and got Winston."

Gino's brow wrinkled, and he scratched his chin.

"Is that even legal?" he said.

I waved absently.

"It's debatable," I said. "You can incorporate for any legitimate purpose, and the secretary doesn't look too closely at royals' business anyway. I incorporated Winston as a child counseling service and paid him a couple pounds a month. He was a good listener. Gave me dividends occasionally."

"That's…pretty disturbing, actually."

"And then my harpy of a little sister got jealous and _killed_ him," I growled.

"You know what? Forget I asked."

"You should have seen her!" I said. "It was disgusting…waggling those sad, puppy-dog eyes at the secretary of state. Of all the gall. _Ultra vires _doctrine my-"

"Seriously, I'm not even curious anymore."

I sighed again. My feet dragged in slow semicircles as I shook my head.

"I don't care if he _was_ just a legal entity," I said. "It was murder. Pure and simple."

"Uh…"

"Not that I'm bitter or anything."

The next couple moments were spent in silence, for some reason.

In retrospect, I probably should have seen it coming. The improper incorporation, I mean. Nunnally _was_ unusually litigious as preschoolers go.


	3. Chapter 3

The boys dispersed for breakfast – a mass exodus from the battleground to the dining halls. Gino suggested celebratory tea. I agreed.

"Mr. Weinberg."

We stopped. Gino gulped and tried to look sober.

Naoto Stadtfeld patted him on the shoulder.

"Great job," he said. "I liked your screening work back there. Very smooth piloting."

"Uh…Thank you, Sir," Gino said.

Naoto grinned. Gino had told me that our Fearless Leader was half-Japanese, but it was hard to tell in the early-morning murk. Naoto was the luckiest sort of half-Britannian: he had red hair, bluish-green eyes, and only the slightest hint of raised cheekbones and epicanthic folds.

He could "pass" if he wanted to. I would learn later that the gift was wasted on him. Whatever Naoto might have told you, he was every inch Lord Stadtfeld's son: intelligent enough to know he was right, but arrogant enough to forget that other people didn't see it that way. Not a good combination in a stupidly bigoted society like the older Britannian Empire.

"You're looking a little under the weather, Mr. Weinberg," he said. "Early morning?"

"Um."

"The answer you're groping for is 'yes'," Naoto said. "Try not to mix your drinks next time."

Belated, frantic nodding followed.

"So, moving on. Good shooting, Mr.-"

"Lamperouge, Sir," I said. "We decided that my mother's name would be less awkward than 'Mr. vi Britannia'."

Naoto nodded, rolling his tongue inside his cheek. He smiled a narrow smile.

"Admirable choice," he said.

"Sir?"

"Using a commoner's name," he said. "They're hard to escape sometimes."

"Commoners?"

"Names."

Naoto ruffled my hair in what he probably thought was a paternal gesture, and strode off. No doubt to let some other students bask in his presence.

* * *

><p>Gino led me to McGregor's Tea-Shop. It was a small, well-dusted parlor nestled among the student living quarters. Gaggles of schoolboys waited in a line for roast potatoes. Most babbled about their recent scrimmage heroism, or picked at the brick wall with pencils.<p>

We took seats in the corner, near the chimney. I would have preferred something a bit further away, since a man with a corncob pipe, twinkling eyes, and fat, stockinged calves had chosen to roost a short distance from us. He traded jibes with the schoolboys. Most of them were inappropriate for polite company.

I learned from Gino that the man was something of a Dunwich curiosity – he'd operated rickshaws in his youth, and had done something vague (and likely illegal) before that. When not exchanging insults with eleven-year-olds, he was partial to sleeping and beer. The latter was a useful thing to know. On those rare occasions when a schoolboy managed to work the fellow into red-faced rage, a little booze could dispel the effect.

A girl in pigtails bustled up to us. She held a napkin over her hand. The effect, overall, called to mind a cross between a milkmaid and a butler. Two menus alighted on our table.

It was overpriced. Having concluded that my money was the only thing preventing me from having a good time, Gino had apparently resolved to relieve me of it as quickly as possible.

The attitude of Britannian youth toward pounds and pence is not entirely dissimilar to that of an exterminator upon encountering a roach infestation.

To Gino's credit, though, McGregor's Tea-Shop served good baked potatoes, and its tea was first-rate. He must have agreed on both points. He'd already exhausted his luxury allowance, and had run up his tick pretty high.

I sighed. Yeah, I'd spare Gino the trouble of paying a massive bill when he came back, but I didn't have to like it. I bought us _both_ tea, a steaming tin of potatoes, and a pound of sausages wrapped in brown paper. _Noblesse oblige_, and all that. Likely unreciprocated. I mentally filed Gino's promise that he would return the gesture under "dubious".

Our food purchased, we headed for the School-house.

Breakfast had already started. Ten or twelve lower-form boys were already lounging in the common room. Dunwich's kitchens had provided each of them with the bare minimum: a hunk of bread, indifferent tea, and a pat of butter. They'd furnished the rest themselves. Most had purchased potatoes like ours. One freckled boy nibbled a herring.

None, apparently, could approach the magnificence of my overpriced sausages.

Gino produced a toasting fork with a flourish. He handed it to me with all the gravity of the Emperor bestowing a Sword of Office. The other boys insisted that I toast the sausages in the next room's fireplace, since they needed to "guard" the butter. I wondered whether it was in the habit of escaping.

So I sat by the fire and listened to the sausages sizzle. The heat dried my eyes. Finally, when I felt as if I'd burned my eyebrows off, the sausages cracked. Gino went to the dining hall to announce the glad tidings.

I hadn't eaten for a while, and my body ached from shoulder to shin. The older knightmare training models demanded full-body movement from their pilots. While that wouldn't have bothered most soldiers, a young boy is a different matter.

I savored the sausages' salt and grease.

My donation did wonders for my prestige with the other boys, by the way. I prefer inspiration, but I'll settle for bribery.

With our meal disposed of, we luxuriated for a while in the firelight's warmth. Gino and I talked about our roles in the scrimmage. My schoolmates explained their investing clubs, law classes, chess gambling, and the year-end Knightmare Simulator Tournament, which drew the entire school into its maelstrom. They took turns showing off bruises from knightmare scrimmages – a morbid custom that Dunwich boys had carried over from the rugby days.

They also mentioned a curious card game that the Houstonshire students had brought to Dunwich. The game had a back-country flavor; it had developed in relative obscurity in riverboats and gambling parlors. One characteristic caught my attention in particular: it permitted a risk-tolerant player to bet his entire fortune on a single hand.

I would remember that little factoid.

I headed to my room to wash up. The aluminum basin of ice-water left something to be desired. Never mind. I dunked my face and tried to ignore the sting.

"You're going to attend the Singing, right?" Gino said.

I emerged from the basin and toweled the frigid droplets from my hair.

"The what now?"

Gino enlightened me. Dunwich's students sang in the library before bedtime – a custom that my father had omitted to mention. They dragged out long oak tables from the days of James the Fourth, and older students spent every cent of their Saturday night beer allowance. Drinking songs from the younger boys were naturally _de rigeur_. Table-pounding and shouting likewise. Students from other Houses would sometimes hammer on the door, and when this occurred, it was customary to hammer back on the other side. A _mensur _bout or boxing match would provide the finishing touch.

All in all, it was precisely the sort of drunken, testosterone-fuelled nonsense that young noblemen relished in those days. Integration scotched all that, of course. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

With little else to do, I finished the upcoming week's assigned readings for corporate law, knightmare squad tactics, and sociology. By the time I was ready to tackle economics, Gino knocked on my door.

It was seven o'clock. Dinner.

* * *

><p>Younger boys were expected to prepare the hall – myself included. When I saw the so-called library, the location began to make sense. It looked more like a dining hall: a long, high-ceilinged room with a roaring fireplace on either side. A pair of forty foot, iron-bound tables filled most of the space. One ran opposite the fireplace, while the other sat in the center of the room. The older boys directed us to place smaller tables in a U-shape around the emptier of the two fireplaces. Their warmth only intensified the sensation of claustrophobia that one got from the crowd's body heat and poor ventilation.<p>

When we'd finished setting the tables, servants brought bread, cheese, and a mixture of juices for us. The older boys got beer. Everyone squeezed in by sections – fifth and sixth forms last, with a few standing at the tables' edges when the room ran out.

A sixth- or seventh form brought in a faded leather-bound book. This, apparently, was the House's songbook – a relic from the days when Prime Minister Webster had attended Dunwich.

One by one, we were expected to sing. As mandated by the enshrined stupidity of tradition, anyone who refused was forced to drink a mug of saltwater.

My own contribution, while grudging, was carefully selected:

_Now the Knights of the Emp'ror were brave men and bold_

_And quite unaccustomed to fear,_

_But the bravest to die 'neath Britannia's broad sky,_

_Was Bismarck, the Viscount of Greer_

_On the day that the Emperor sundered his House_

_Disinheriting all but his son,_

_When Britannia was torn; when the Lords promised war_

_He was christened the next Knight of One…_

Others opted for less inflammatory music-hall songs: "The Britannian Grenadiers", "Lily Dale", "With Walker in Nicaragua", and the like. During intermissions, beer bottle corks flew across the no-man's land between tables. One of them plopped in my juice, splattering my white pants purple.

Still, Naoto managed to maintain _some_ order. Gino's attempt to sing the original version of "One Eyed Riley" was shot down almost before it began. For obvious reasons.

At last, Naoto himself stood. He opened his mouth, but the cascade of cheering, table pounding, and the footfalls of small boys hopping up and down drowned out his first words.

I locked eyes with him, trying to ignore the noise. I'm occasionally asked whether I first learned how a leader operates from my (largely absentee) father. Or worse, Gottwald. Neither is a terrible guess, but Jeremiah's influence came later, and Father's a few years after that. My first teacher (so to speak) was Naoto Stadtfeld.

The irony does not escape me.

The noise had stopped. Naoto waited a few moments. And a few more.

"Right," he said. "You all know that Dunwich creates noblemen—"

Resounding cheers. He held up his hands until it quieted down.

"—Now, nobility is a very tricky thing," he said. "It's old, for one. As old as our history. Older, even. Britannia's thick with it."

Nods all around.

"Because it's old, it's picked up all sorts of parts along the way," he said. "A nobleman makes the laws, but he also obeys them. He honors tradition, yes. But he doesn't ignore the future. Like knightmare frames."

Naoto permitted himself the briefest of smiles. A few boys chuckled

"…He expects the same obedience from his subordinates as a matter of course. Like-like a father, I guess."

And here his voice hardened.

"_But he also nurtures them like a father should_," Naoto said. "A perfect nobleman wouldn't need to tell anybody to do anything. Why? Because his subordinates would already know what to do. And they'll only learn how to do _that_ when _he_ learns to bloody well let go. Remember that, prefects."

A few awkward shifts and coughs from the back row. Fingers tightened around rods of office.

Naoto tapped the Dunwich insignia on his own shirt's breast pocket. It was a miniature of the Britannian coat of arms. A lion and serpent stood side by side on a black field, looking up at a crown.

"We serve," Naoto said. "That's what the coat of arms means. It's not an accident that you boys learn law and knightmare combat at the same time. Nobles rule _and_ fight. Lion _and_ serpent. But both of those animals are bowing to the Crown."

Naoto paused and glanced at me.

"Bowing to the _people_ of Britannia," he said. "Who even the Emperor serves."

My eyes narrowed. Naoto continued.

"You're all Britannia's best. You're going to apply what you learn here sooner than you think. Remember something, though. It's certainly not _birth _that'll matter most, and the technical stuff isn't very important either. Nobody cares about the Rule Against Perpetuities."

Scrunched brows. A few laughs scattered through the sixth-form boys.

"No, seriously," Naoto said. "Nobody cares. That's true if you're leading soldiers, corporations, or whatever. It's character that matters. I'm not talking about courage. That's a given. More like fairness, duty to country, concern for your subordinates. The important stuff."

And that, dear readers, was Pater Naoto Stadtfeld in a nutshell. The noblest fool in Dunwich.

It occurred to me that Naoto had kept his hands on the table. He hadn't accompanied his speech with the arm-waving histrionics so popular with Britannian orators in those days. Nor had he peppered it with Latin tags.

Naoto clapped, rubbing his hands together.

"One more thing," he said. "Most of you know me; I'd be the last person to insult this House—"

"Huzzah!"

"—but we've got a problem. The younger boys know what I'm talking about. Anyone?"

Sudden silence. A few of the braver ones glanced at Luciano Bradley, who sat in the corner with a few cronies. Lamplight painted his spotless white suit orange. He rolled an unlit cheroot in his fingers. It was almost an open challenge, since Dunwich prohibited smoking. Almost. Naoto frowned.

"Bullying," Naoto said. "I don't get involved in this crap usually. It'd only make the bullies sneakier, and encourage the younger boys to make up stories about their seniors."

Gino leaned over to me. He cupped a hand to his mouth and whispered.

"True enough," he said. "Half the second form would be pumping out crocodile tears by now."

I wasn't so sure, but kept my own counsel. Schoolboy prejudices sink deep roots into their hosts. Few grow deeper than the hatred of squealers, and Naoto had gone to the same school as the rest.

"Remember what I said earlier?" Naoto said. "That applies here. You all call me 'Pater'. All right. But I still expect you to solve your problems like adults. Bullies are cowards. They destroy discipline, and I expect the older boys to keep the bullies in line…or I _will_ get involved."

Luciano's snort was audible, but Naoto chose to ignore it.

The rest of the dinner passed uneventfully. Jimmy Milton whined about Headmaster Darlton's decision to sell the Dunwich foxhounds. All three of them. Other conversations ran the gamut of eleven-year-old interests, and no further: football, cricket, boxing, and swimming. I perked up a little when I heard chess mentioned, but it only amounted to a boy describing the Scholar's Mate trick.

Preston Brooke (who insisted upon being called "Preston Brooke II", though nobody did) brought up the rumored influx of female classmates again. This time, the worries took on a definite shape. He'd heard from his father in the Ministry of Education that Dunwich would merge with the girls' school at Falcon Point, which two Rounds-candidate pilots were attending.

Dinner concluded with songs of an altogether more ancient lineage. Mugs were upended. The drunker upper-form students stood on one leg and laid money down that they could outlast the others.

_...In the public house to die_

_Is my resolution;_

_Let wine to my lips be nigh_

_At life's dissolution..._

The clock struck at nine thirty. Porters entered with candles at the end of long wooden candlesticks. They slid them into holes in the tables. They fit precisely, like those umbrellas in commoners' outdoor tables.

Bells rang five minutes later. We filed out by sections, while Darlton watched us from the stairs like the Emperor at Victory Square. He'd crooked a finger into Mahan's _Influence of Seapower_ _Upon History _to keep his place. It appeared that he'd progressed a few hundred pages since last evening.

Looking back on it, Darlton had a Nelsonian gift for ignoring minor transgressions. Lots of us were drunk, but not smashed. He returned to his book.

We marched past.

* * *

><p>When we reached the top of the stairway, a crowd of first-years clogged our path. They'd clustered around a fireplace, whispering to each other. All of them stayed away from the doors to their rooms.<p>

"Soooo," Gino said. "Looking forward to getting tossed in a blanket?"

"…What."

The tiniest smile appeared on Gino's face. He put an arm around my shoulders in that hail-fellow-well-met way of his.

"Oh, you know," he said. "The older boys like to put us on blankets and toss us once in a while. Especially newbies like you. 'Course, you could always chicken out and hide…"

"Gino, you have a worrying tendency to warn me about things right before they happen."

His smile widened.

"Keeps you on your toes."

At my glare, Gino patted me on the back.

"Aw, c'mon. It doesn't hurt much unless they drop you on the floor," he said.

"…And I feel so much better now."

One of the doors opened at the end of a hall. An older boy strode out. The crowd melted in an instant, scattering for the stairs like cockroaches when the lights turn on.

Gino and I headed for our own rooms – which, I had learned over the last few hours, adjoined each other. I can only presume that this is one of the reasons "The Management" (as Gino called it) had matched him up with me earlier.

"Well?" he said. "You up for it?"

I recalled the month I'd spent with my sister in the Imperial managerie, watching the chimpanzees. Nunnally had read Lady Ferguson's work, and had decided that she wanted to be a primatologist when she grew up. My sister had ultimately lost interest. So had I – but I'd learned a lesson first. There's nothing more dangerous for a young male chimp than showing weakness.

And chimpanzees have nothing on schoolboys.

"I won't hide," I said.

Gino nodded.

"Good man. Come on, then…"

We waited in a larger room. It had ten or twelve iron-framed beds in it, but it seemed otherwise unoccupied. Gino stripped off his waistcoat and shoes, placing them carefully by a nightstand. He advised me to do the same. The little lunatic was whistling.

The doors flew open.

As they slammed against the wall, fifth- and sixth-form boys flooded through the doorway. A young man stood at their head, grinning from ear to ear. He turned to his compatriots. A chill settled in my stomach.

"Oh, crap," Gino muttered.

"Well, boys…" Luciano said. "Looks like the vermin have tunneled. Flush 'em out. I'll keep an eye on these two."

Luciano grabbed our shoulders. He was _strong_. Aches lanced through the muscles he'd clamped.

His companions moved with efficiency that would have impressed Internal Crown Security agents. Mattresses flew. White curtains were thrown open with a series of clacks. Trunks spilled. One by one, Luciano's thugs pulled squealing first-years from their burrows. A fair-skinned boy screamed for mercy, clinging onto a bedpost for dear life. They hauled him by his right leg. He didn't let go.

Luciano growled.

"Let go if you want to live, kid."

"Please, Mr. Bradley, I—I don't want to be tossed. And…and Pater Stadtfeld said—"

Luciano belted the boy in the face. The boy's grip jolted loose. He crumpled.

"Hang Stadtfeld, and hang his halfbreed cowardice."

The boy tried to crawl away, his eyes watery. Luciano stepped on his leg. He stopped crawling.

"Um…he kinda has a point there, Bradley," one of the older boys whispered.

Luciano's fists tightened. He glared down at the oh-so-tempting victim trembling on the ground. A trickle of blood was running down the boy's chin.

"Don't you dare wipe that off," Luciano said.

The boy's hand froze halfway to his mouth. Luciano spat on him, and then walked back to us.

"Welllllllll…" he said. "Naoto-bleeding-heart-Stadtfeld can't complain about these two, at least. Didn't hide or anything. Practically begged for it. A member of the royal family, too. You're the Emperor's brat?"

My teeth were clenching.

"And you're the Emperor's _subject_," I replied. "Funny how that works."

Luciano rested his hands on his hips and laughed. He elbowed one of his fellows.

"Oh, I _like_ him," he said. "You like him, Jameson?"

"Er, yes, Bradley."

"Then stop looking nervous, dolt!" he said. "You heard the Profs. He's just a regular student here. No special protection."

"Yeah, but—"

"And we'd be remiss if we didn't give him the full Dunwich treatment, wouldn't we?"

"…I guess."

Luciano grinned and pulled us down the passage. Behind us, the other first-forms peeked out from their hiding places. I tried not to glare at them. Their whispers made it difficult.

_"Brave guys."_

_"Stupid, more like."_

_ "Psh, yeah. Wait'll he's been tossed."_

_"Who stands in the open, anyway?"_

The floorboards' creaks seemed louder now. I could hear my own heartbeat.

Luciano squeezed my left shoulder. It was more a kneading motion than a vice-grip, like the world's creepiest massage.

"Y'know..." Luciano said, "Carine Technically-Not-le-Britannia-Anymore is a cousin of mine. Our parents had the marriage arrangements all worked out. Would've had to wait a few years, but hey. That's what chambermaids are for."

"Fascinating."

"If you want to get _technical_, you and your sister cost me a connection to the Royal Family. Well, your commoner mother did when she popped you out. Disinheritance is a bitch."

"How inconvenient for you."

He laughed. A few of his companions were wincing, but they didn't do anything.

"Oh, no," he said. "Inconvenient for _you_, Mr…'Lamperouge', is it? Pfft."

We entered a large, open room without furniture. An overweight, older boy with curly hair retrieved a blanket.

Half a dozen hands gripped me. They pushed me onto the blanket. And…

"Yaah!"

…launched me. My stomach turned a few loops. The ceiling rushed at my head. Closer. I decelerated just in time to avoid ramming into a beam.

A cold jolt of adrenaline and nausea gripped my stomach. I fell.

"One, two – AWAY!"

Up again. This time, I needed to hold out my hand to avoid hitting the ceiling. My palm slammed into it. Hard. I hissed.

Cheers from below.

My insides churned again when I spun downward. It's a powerless feeling – knowing that you'll fall again, and that there's nothing to be done. The blanket received me.

"Having fun?" Luciano said.

Another launch.

"Has it occurred to you," I said, "how stupid it is to antagonize—Aaagh!"

My elbow banged the ceiling. My joints were freezing from the nonexistent heating system already, and they exploded into cold, throbbing pain.

"Nah," said Luciano.

Down. Lurch.

Up. Pain.

Like anything else, staying safe during a blanket toss is a skill. You need to avoid struggling. Struggling just sends you off course, you see – toward the floor.

The second trick? Act scared. "Don't give them the satisfaction" might sound noble, but it also encourages them to keep tossing until you are. Alas, I hadn't learned much yet.

"Let him _go_, Bradley!" somebody shouted. "He's held up well, hasn't he?"

I blinked. Was that Gino's voice?

BAM!

My knee felt as if I'd jammed it into the world's largest electrical socket.

It's odd what sticks with you. Despite the collisions, the chill, and everything else, I can still remember Luciano clicking his tongue in annoyance.

"Grab Weinberg," he said. "Toss 'em both together. That should jostle one of 'em loose, anyway."

Down.

Up.

An older boy's voice replied this time:

"Look, Bradley. You know what Naoto said about bullying. Let's just—"

He stopped talking, for some reason. My vision was spinning, so I couldn't see much; just a shock of red hair surrounded by white suits, viewed from a dozen different angles.

But I heard the silk in Luciano's voice.

"Bullying? Bullies are cowards, MacMillan," he said. "Do I need to prove otherwise?"

Another silence stretched on.

Down.

Up.

_Please, please don't toss us together…_

Down.

Up.

"N-no, Bradley, it's not—"

"Sharps or barkers, MacMillan?"

"I'm telling you, I didn't—"

"_Sharps or barkers_? I won't wait all day for you to pick the weapons."

Down.

Up.

"I…I think you're right after all. I think we should toss them together."

I heard flesh clapping fabric.

"Of _course_ you do, MacMillan."

I hit the blanket for a final time.

* * *

><p>It went limp in an instant. My back collided with the floor, knocking the air from my lungs. I wheezed. Gasped. Tried to suck oxygen that wasn't there.<p>

One of the older boys cursed.

"Prepostor," Luciano said.

Scattering footsteps.

I noticed them only insofar as they coincided with an end to the ordeal. There were a few shouts, but I was too busy wheezing and puking to care.

Somebody held my shoulders and said I was brave. That I hadn't asked for it to stop, or something like that. I guess it was Gino.

I've never thanked him for that, though I should have.


End file.
